"The current state of math in the media is abysmal," said math journalist Sara Robinson at an applied mathematics colloquium April 14 at Cornell University. What the math community needs, she said, is an independent mathematical news service, funded and written by math experts.

"The Future of Math in the Media," presented by freelance writer Robinson, who has written about math and computer science for The New York Times and SIAM news, the news journal of applied mathematics, attracted more than 50 people, about three times this colloquium's usual size, said organizers.

Robinson shared her frustration over the dearth of coverage of mathematics in the media as well as the poor quality of coverage when it does exist. There are so few math stories in the media these days, Robinson said, because math and the way the media works now are not compatible. Editing math stories is a particularly long, complicated process because "math is sensitive to small perturbations," Robinson explained.

Math is not only underrepresented in the news, Robinson asserted, but it is also often misrepresented. She provided an example of a recent news story about mathematician Lennart Carleson winning the 2006 Abel Prize for his work on the Fourier series.

"Some people read this article and think that the Fourier series was invented in the 1960s, and its primary application is iPods," Robinson asserted. In fact, this series of repeated curves was invented in the early 19th century and has since had applications for everything from heat transfer and statistics to oceanography and acoustics.

Robinson also noted that the Internet is changing the form of media-audience relationships. As print media undergoes "a slow death," she said, there is an opportunity for mathematicians to anticipate and mold a new, more math-friendly media system.

A dedicated mathematical news service, managed and funded by the math community, could increase the quality and prevalence of math in the media as well as save money that many mathematics organizations are already spending on public relations, she added.

If mathematicians themselves wrote news stories for the media, Robinson said, they would have control over many things in mathematics that the current media system cannot address. "It's like doing the work for them," she said.

Graduate student Sara Ball is a writer intern at the Cornell News Service.

Correction:
This report erroneously stated that Robinson had been a staff writer for The New York Times and for SIAM News. While she has been a regular freelance contributor to both publications, she has not been a staff writer for either. Also, the article should have noted that Robinson is a mathematician with a graduate degree in mathematics from the University of California-Berkeley.